The
Republican disposition to identify with faith thus makes a great fit for the
honor-based fondness for moralizing. At the practical end of the stick this
means that Republicans find it possible, indeed preeminently rational, to
declare to themselves and to the world that making money and being successful
are the moral prerequisites to a healthy
democracy. Don't laugh; there is a brand of Protestant theology gaining
wide traction that stresses exactly that message. Apropos God's will that we go
out and propagate dollar bills is the commonplace that Republicans fill the
ballast of those entrepreneurial pyramid programs like Amway. Republicans are
nothing if not thorough about their self-interest, even if that requires putting
words in God's mouth.

When those
from honor-based societies emigrate to our country they find a receptive home
in business and, as evidence illustrates, do quite well, thank you very much.
The critical and hugely important difference between imports and native-grown moralists,
however, is the former's commitment to ensuring basic needs to all alike. In
point of theory and principle, it is likewise dignity-based, though the
honor-based motivation isn't quite the same as ours. They have never been able
to approve of dependence on others, which is viewed as an unnatural burden
reflecting a character defect. In their societies efforts are undertaken to
avoid conditions that make dependence the sore spot for society that it
typically turns out to be. The ghettos in South American urban areas are caused
by the same conservative mentality that produces the American equivalent, and
not because the peoples' philosophy of life approves it. When pundits suggest
we are already a banana republic, that's what they imply, less the caring part.
Elites everywhere create disastrous cults of dignity. We are at risk of
passively abetting the very worst.

Republicans,
while fully agreeing that dependence is a defect -- the work of the indwelling Devil -- have absolutely no
desire to work matters so as to avoid the problem. They prefer to permit the
problem and avoid its consequences by devoting serious resources in the effort
to insulate and isolate themselves. One reason they could care less about
global warming is that they can afford to avoid the consequences. These
consequences and justifications amount to creating the finest Venetian blinds
for their glass houses. The end result, of course, is a blindness both to humanity
and to the rudimentary responsibilities that all honor-based societies have
always and everywhere acknowledged.

The land of opportunity

Opportunity,
to hear it from Republicans, is a meow that miraculously transduces across
phyla in order to exchange mean barks with the underclass once Republican
policies are doing what they do so well. Should opportunity dilute the potential
for profit, whether by capitalist competition or government doles, Republicans are
not well for it. In between the capitalist and government variations on profit
dilution is the concept of stewardship. In theory, corporate entities benefit
in many ways from an honest attempt at stewardship. It exists to prevent
collateral damage from concentrated power; it helps the corporate brand by
enhancing respectability, and augments sustainability through conduct the
integrity of which solidifies trust in the corporate management.

Republicans welcome
branding that increases market share, and predictably detest all else, whence
the corporate charter, which implies all of this, has been gutted by the courts
in deference to arguments from high dollar industry lawyers arguing that stepping
on the brakes equates to slippery slopes and falling skies. Judges routinely
buy into this in part because they are not taught the reality of law's dependence
on stewardship and the offices protected thereby. Were stewardship the term of
legal art applied to offices in general rather than the narrowly prescribed application
to union bargaining, Republicans would not get away with the worst of what they
do by nature.

All of which
speaks poorly of lawyers, of courts, of corporate business (and we're really
just warming up). J. P. Morgan famously decried stewardship (providing
employment was stewardship), and
according to some helped to fashion conservatism into the mantra that it
remains today for Republicans: financial prowess coupled with commitment to
religion and the facilitation [entitlements] of high culture. Thus there is
widespread apoplexy when liberals, who merely ask on the basis of inherent
dignity for equal opportunity, call for spending that would ensure an even
playing field. Republicans have never been interested in an even playing field
excepting when it benefits them and them alone. It's high time we all
understood this for the reality that it is. You cannot explain reality apart
from this unpleasant fact.

A further
honor-based feature shared by Republicans is the supreme joy in identifying
with greatness. Russians exemplify the style, with their hero worship of chess
masters and allowance for the acknowledged wayward behavior of prima donnas.
Regardless who it is that Republicans want to identify with and emulate, I am
going to exercise a novelist's prerogative and name the most appropriate, the
same J. P. Morgan already mentioned. Even the glorifying biographer John K.
Winkler had to declare at least a few solid facts that will brand the
Republican ideal. "He took what he wanted. His code was his own. He did things
that today could not be defended in law or morals. But, for his time and
generation, he played the game and played it fairly." When Wall Street claims
that the public just doesn't "get it', they are referring to the game they all
play. Doesn't really go very far, does it? Fair for a den of thieves seems
closer to the truth.

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Winkler also
offered an apt metaphor capturing the temper of our own time, when remarking on
the Roosevelt-Morgan feud: "Friends of both sought to bring them together.
There were many meetings, but no fusion of friendship. To Roosevelt, Morgan was
a man whose talents were devoted entirely to entrenching the power of organized
capital. To Morgan, Roosevelt was a gentleman gone wrong -- a man who sacrificed
all the privileges of his class for common applause."

Too many
liberals and some independents naively expect warring entities to become
purple. "We're all purple,' announced President Obama years back. Nice words to
get elected, not so accurate for truth-telling. No conscious liberal is going
to metaphorically bed up with Hitler and then accept the shame that befitted
Chamberlain. The friendships between those holding mutual political offices are
for show. Professionalism is supposed to do the rest based on the rules of
offices that demand the job get done at a high standard. It is only the lack of
accountability and the ugly composition of the Republican presence that foils
efforts at rational compromise.

Morgan's
impression of Roosevelt was not based in fact but in moralistic terms. In
classic honor-based theory, outsiders are as good as inhuman, at a minimum
barbarian. His words were high moralism meant to enshrine felt entitlement. In
sum, the 'opportunity' of America is for the powerful to be an acolyte of 'high
culture'. To a Republican it also smacks of entitlement on steroids.
Opportunity for the underclass is a useful locution -- for getting votes. The economic arguments
suggesting that the underclass is helped by jobs created by Republican policy are
a sham. The underclass is being used and abused.

Fifty years
ago Republicans didn't used to be quite this extreme. Even Richard Nixon
favored a guaranteed national income. Never mind the fact that it is a built-in
stimulus package that can only put money in Republican pockets and seriously
reduce the downside of down-turns in the business cycles. None of that fluffy
stuff for today's Republicans, Their objection is moral, not economic or
political. They, like their honor-based counterparts, are disposed to be
moralistic. They get away with this nonsense because their underclass rigidly
adheres to self-help credos along with much else in the honor-based litany.

What remains
unexplained is that equal opportunity presupposes reliance on self-help. Why on
earth wouldn't Republicans support opportunities that lead to self-help? I
can't imagine any economist denying that competition at the level of
opportunity wouldn't result in greater productivity across the board. The
liberal position is that, given the nature of reality and of Republicans, such
opportunity comes at a cost a portion of which society may have to pay for
through taxation. Brown v. Board of
Education was addressing this very issue. Separate schools were not
offering equal opportunity and it was a cruel joke to suppose otherwise. The
idea that property taxes would support schools was an attempt to equalize
opportunity, but the desire to throw any amount of money at an education that
granted status and a better college (etc & etc.) meant that those who could,
moved into neighborhoods where high culture, high taxes and great schools were
the perfect troika, effectively replicating 'separate but equal' and denying
the spirit of Brown. Republicans
simply took advantage, and can't honestly be blamed for that. It was 'the
system' that screwed up educational opportunity. But it was sheer manna for
their ideological Weltanschauung. Except, that is, for Republicans who would
not tolerate their angelic children mingling with the heathens.

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Of course if
you have enough money you can send kids to private schools that are effectively
college prep academies, and there's no arguing against that, nor should there
be. That's how the system was designed. That's not exactly how Republicans want
it to work, however. Republicans who fall in between ridding themselves of the
heathen and the ability to afford the prep academy are still faced with paying
the freight of a separate, private, education. They have never been well for
that. Then they dreamt up Charter schools. Clever. Liberals saw what was going
on and took them to court in Republican Arizona, no less, in a case that wound
up in the lap of the five Catholic conservative justices who not unexpectedly handed
the Republicans what they wanted. This business of Republican ideology isn't
just a disease, it is a virus that spreads. After decades of this High Court
politicking, lawyers are still able to ignore reality in favor of the happy
mythic mantra that the Court does not abide mixing politics with law. Someone
hasn't been to the clue store.

Writing in
the Atlantic,
Garrett Epps saw the majority [for
the Court] defending the proposition that harnessing religion for "public and
civil duty" is a great idea. He then wrote about James Madison's veto message
of 1811, noting the clear parallel: "he sent back to Congress a bill that would
have funneled tax money to a church in the District of Columbia to operate a
school." (Justice Scalia's version of
originalism doesn't much abide legislative intent or the fact of vetoes on
behalf of the people.) Back in reality, instances illustrate the
creative ways in which Republicans have used the recent ruling to have their
cake and eat it too. In some cases funds dedicated as scholarships for the poor
landed
in the laps of those already in the
private school. Clever, these Republicans! They are out for number one. There
is no such thing as doing what is right for the community or state or nation. They
truly are apostles for J. P. Morgan. And they truly are proud of it. They are
the entitled hypocrites of our era.

And why
exactly are Republicans so attached to this curious topic? It manifestly is not
helping the underclass, with the pitifully tiny exceptions of exceptional
students. They want what they want and they want it for as low a cost as
possible. Like everything else in the marketplace, morality is what they and
the market says it is. Which is precisely the problem. They care for nothing
but themselves, meaning that they use and abuse all else, justifying whatever
they can on the morality of the marketplace. Clever, convenient, cruel and unconscionable.

Mr. Herrman is a liberal philosopher specializing in structural metaphysics, where he develops methodologies enabling him to derive valid and verifiable answers not only in matters of the ontology of reality, but also in real-world concerns for (more...)